Trumpeter LCAC

[Guest]

That's coming along well. Looks fiddly though!

Thanks, and yes, it is quite fiddly, especially cleaning up all those handrails and things. Some of them aren’t moulded quite right so the seam is very pronounced. The rest is not too bad, though some experience with 1/72 scale or so vehicles (or, probably, kits of ships) will probably help a lot to put this one together, given the size of many of the parts.

can you give a little idea of the size of this craft as I know its 1/144 ?

The black rubber skirt is about 18.5 cm long and 10 cm wide (I already mentioned this in the opening post ). According to Wikipedia, the real thing is 26.4 metres long and 14.3 metres wide, which is 18.3 cm × 9.9 cm in 1/144, meaning the kit scales out pretty well by the looks of it.

[Jim R]

Hi Jakko
Nice progress. As mentioned it does look fiddly. You say you started this around 10 years ago. Was it a newly released kit at that time?
Jim

[Guest]

I think I bought it soon after it came out, yes. Scalemates says this kit came out in 2007, so I must have bought (and built) it about 10–12 years ago. (Incidentally, I also see there that the Pit-Road kit is a reissue of this one.)

[JR]

I shall sit well out of the back draught !

[Guest]

Nah, there’s only a little spray … You’d hardly get wet at all:

I notice now, though, that Trumpeter seems to have the windscreen wipers wrong. IIRC (I’m not near the model as I type this), it has wipers like those of a car, with angled struts. In the video you can see quite well that they move sideways.

[Guest]

Everything is now a uniform light grey, after a coat of GW Corax White (take that name with a grain of salt):

[ATTACH]341895[/ATTACH]

Next up, I think, will be some washing and drybrushing to shade and weather the bits of the craft that will stay light grey, followed by painting the deck a darker grey, as well as various other details in all kinds of colours.

[scottie3158]

Jakko,
An interesting build and something unusual. The only hovercraft I have built was the old Airfix SRN-1 when I was a kid.

[Lee Drennen]

Jakko
Nice project and progress having a sit by John

[JR]

Jakko great video, I shall move even further back with Lee.
Can't imagine the salt water doing those vehicles much good, no doubt a good washing later on deck.
Are you going to include any , it would really add to the the overall build.

[Guest]

I intend to add an M1A1 Abrams, which I already have but just need to repaint. Well, finish repainting — it’s a prepainted model by Dragon that I gave one coat of sand-coloured paint that hasn’t covered too well.

[Guest]

More painting! I used a wash of Tamiya Medium Grey on most of the parts to accentuate the detail. Here are a few samples:

[ATTACH]342033[/ATTACH]
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Most of the deck is to be darker grey, so no need for a wash there. Talking of which, a few bits of the on and off ramps also need to be that colour, so I added more masking tape:

[ATTACH]342031[/ATTACH]

Next, I brush-painted Vallejo Dark Blue-Grey in two thin coats:

[ATTACH]342032[/ATTACH]

This paint is a bit odd in that it darkens as it dries. Brushing it on, it’s more a medium grey, but then turns a good deal darker. The same colour needs to go on the roofs of several of the superstructure pieces, but I haven’t gotten to that yet.

[Guest]

The plain grey deck was a bit too plain, so I added a wash over it to break it up a bit. Removing the masking revealed the yellow and metal bits:

[ATTACH]343786[/ATTACH]

And here is the model with all the superstructure bits in place, though still loose:

[ATTACH]343785[/ATTACH]

The details have been painted, based on various LCAC pictures I found online. I didn’t try to replicate any single craft, but just added a mixture of details I noticed. The bridge/cockpit/whatever they call it isn’t in place yet, but the windows are. I also still need to add the windscreen wipers, and then the decals. Only when all that is done will I glue the parts together.

[Guest]

It’s been a while, mainly because I was didn’t much feel like adding the windscreen wipers — these are fiddly, tiny bits with a blade of about 3 mm long and half a millimetre or so wide. I finally got off my arse and put them on.

[ATTACH]345452[/ATTACH]

Initially, I followed the kit’s instructions and just tried to glue the wiper to the window. This is doomed to failure, because it attaches above the frame, and the window sits quite deep inside that frame. After adding three with Humbrol Clearfix, I removed them again and bent all the wipers so the blade is at a 90 degree angle to the arm, as you can see in the photo above, which compensates for the depth. Just a dab of superglue at the top holds them on well enough.

Of course, after taking care that they’re all in the same position, I looked at photos of real LCACs and saw that they’re actually independent. sigh

Then it was just a matter of painting them matt black:

[ATTACH]345451[/ATTACH]

Now I need to put the decals on, which I hope to do tomorrow. I’ve told myself this model needs to get finished before I can start on the next one I have in mind. Luckily, that one is still underway to me, so I’m physically prevented from beginning to build it yet

[Guest]

Now with the decals on:

[ATTACH]345573[/ATTACH]

I’m not sure whether to put a layer of matt varnish over everything. One the one hand, the decals have a fair amount of shine from certain angles, on the other I’m afraid it will accentuate the carrier film that’s already visible around the larger markings, like the LCAC-43 at the front.

Some advice for anyone else building this kit, though: don’t use the decals for the yellow and red stripes — paint and mask them like I did for the stripes on the deck. This will save you a lot a problems getting everything on correctly. The decals are thin and fairly fragile, and especially the long, narrow ones are likely to break as you’re putting them onto the model.

On the positive side, they respond very well to Micro Sol, so that even the decals that go on the heavily textured outsides of the ramps fit very nicely over all the detail.

For some reason also, Trumpeter provides 50% spares for many of the decals. For example, there are three copies of the yellow vertical “CAUTION” marks near the back, but only two needed on the model, and fully twelve “AIR INLETS DO NOT COVER” when you only need eight … Pretty much only the stripe markings are provided exactly as many times as needed.

The kit also includes a lot of white markings to put on the skirt, but I don’t expect those decals to hold very well, so I left them off. I may see about painting them on instead, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll try that yet. I also need to paint a few more details and glue everything together (in the photo above, all the superstructure is still loose), but then the model will be done.

[scottie3158]

Jakko, that is a great result.